Johanna Gruskin Flute/Piccolo Master Class & Demo Recital

Johanna Gruskin, NEC alum, presents a master class featuring students from the NEC flute studios, followed by a recital. 

Johanna Gruskin joined the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as Principal Piccolo in 2022, having previously held positions with the New World Symphony and Knoxville Symphony. She has performed as a guest with the Sydney Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and Milwaukee Symphony, among others. A two-time fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, Johanna later returned as a featured performer of contemporary music with the New Fromm Players. Johanna holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, and Colburn Conservatory. Her primary teachers include Bonita Boyd, Elizabeth Rowe, and Jim Walker. Continue reading...

Seolyeong Jeong serves as Affiliated Artist and Lead Staff Pianist at MIT's Music and Theater Arts, and as collaborative pianist at the New England Conservatory and Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall and Seoul Arts Center. She has won prizes at the 2024 IKOF Competition, 2023 American Virtuoso International Music Competition, and many others. Seolyeong holds piano performance degrees from Seoul National University, Yale University (MM and MMA), and Rice University (DMA). Her primary teachers include Jon Kimura Parker and Peter Frankl.

Program notes:
Yozora 夜空 for solo flute explores the introspective and questioning nature of inner thoughts. The piece is inspired by the contemplation encouraged by gazing at the night sky, an act that holds spiritual significance in Japanese culture. The lone and continuous voice of a single flute highlights a feeling of connection to something larger than oneself. In Japanese spirituality, observing the stars fosters a connection with kami, the spirits of nature, inviting reflection on the mysteries of existence. This serves as a starting point for the piece. Through fluid and intuitive phrases, the piece unfolds as an internal monologue, delving into moments of searching, revelation, anguish, and calm. Yozora 夜空 evokes the ebb and flow of these changing states, guiding the listener through a stream of inner reflections.

Gillian Whitehead writes: I began writing Taurangi in the shadow of both the East Timor crisis and the death of my good friend and sometime mentor of many years, the musicologist and historian John Mansfield Thomson. These events modified both the original formal ideas and the detail of the piece. Williams’ A Dictionary of the Māori Language gives 4 meanings for the word ‘taurangi’ — ‘unsettled’, ‘changing or changeable’, ‘incomplete, unsatisfied, unfulfilled’, ‘to grieve for’ and ‘wanderer’.

Badb (pronounced 'badhv' where 'dh' is a voiced fricative, as in 'these') was one of a trio of war-goddesses from Irish legend. She assumed variously the guises of a beautiful woman, an old hag, and a carrion crow. Her manifestation in the latter form was an omen of death. Before a battle she would appear in anticipation of the carnage, and as the battle took place, would flit around the heads of the warriors. Afterwards, she would feed on the corpses strewn across the fields. Like the other two battle-furies, Macha and the M'rr'gan, Badb was both sinister and sexual; she prophesied the end of the world, the fall of the gods and an endless reign of chaos. There are three distinct types of material in this piece, portraying the three juxtaposed personalities of Badb: the sinuous, seductive syrensong of sing-flute representing the mysterious, beautiful femme fatale who befriended the Irish warrior C' Chulainn, then lured him to his death; the unearthly shrieks and battle-cries of the old hag, which were said to arouse fear and dread in the living; and the hideous crow, pecking at the flesh of the slain with bloodied maw. Much of the piano's harmonic structure is derived and interpolated from chords representing the crow in Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux, while the notes B, A and D feature prominently through the piece.